E-mail a friendVan Jones
original airdate March 27, 2008
Van Jones has a history of activism. The founder-exec director of the Oakland, CA-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights has also emerged as a national environmental leader, calling for green economic development in urban America. He's founding president of Green For All, a national campaign for green-collar opportunities, and worked for passage, in the House, of the Green Jobs Act of 2007. Jones holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and has worked as a journalist, independent publisher and cartoonist.
Full Interview. (12:56)
Van Jones
Tavis: Van Jones is the co-founder of the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which focuses on issues of social and environmental inequality. Beginning April 4th, he will be in Memphis as well for the Green For All event, which promotes economic opportunities specifically in urban areas. Van Jones, nice to have you here.
Van Jones: Good to see you again, sir.
Tavis: We've been promoting around here that we're going to be in Memphis as well all next week, our TV show. This show, in fact, programming note, will emanate from Memphis next week. As you know, next Friday, April 4th, the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the person I regard, at least, as the greatest American ever produced, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
So starting Monday night, all week next week we'll be doing this show from Memphis, my radio show next week from Memphis as well on Public Radio International. And Van Jones, with so many other folk, will be in Memphis next week.
And you're going to focus attention on the issue of the environment, specifically in urban areas. Tell me why you chose Memphis, why you chose the time, and more about the campaign.
Jones: Well good. I am one of the founders, as you know, of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. We've now spun off a new organization called Green For All. We're going to Memphis, our campaign is really clear that if Dr. King were alive today - Dr. King fought for equal protection and equal opportunity in his time. In this new ecological age, equal protection means no more Katrinas.
Don't leave our grandmamas on rooftops, waving American flags for six days with no protection, no help from the government. But he would also be saying, "We want equal opportunity." In an ecological age, equal opportunity means let us into the solar industry, that's growing. Let us into the wind industry, green construction.
The only thing growing in the economy right now are the so-called green-collar jobs - that are good for your pocketbook, also good for the Earth. Dr. King would say, "Let us have equal protection from the worst of global warming, but let us have equal opportunity to the best of the green economy." So we're going to Memphis to raise that up as a part of the overall legacy of Dr. King.
Tavis: Speaking of Dr. King's legacy, one of the many reasons, and this is nowhere near the top of the list - at the top of the list, of course, is his notion of love and service to everyday people.
Jones: That's right, that's right.
Tavis: But somewhere on that list, Van, I think we would agree, has to be the brilliance of his oratory.
Jones: Yes.
Tavis: Part of the reason why he stands out, he was an oratorical genus, no question about that. I raise that only because I wonder how it is that we get traction on an issue, all important, but how do we get traction on an issue like the one you're raising if you don't have somebody like King, who can get people to listen to what he's saying because of how he's saying it?
Jones: Yes. Well, part of the thing is the whole way the environmental movement has been framed has been wrong for our community. We're supposed to cry about polar bears and stuff like that, and if Pooky don't have a job, then Pooky might get shot today. I can't cry about a polar bear dying when Pooky is dying.
So we have to be able to then come back to our community and say, first of all, we have the most stake; Katrina shows that. If global warming keeps going the way it's going, we got tornadoes wandering through downtown Atlanta; these kind of things are getting wackier and wackier. Your grandmama can tell you, weather used to not be like this.
And so grandmama knows that something is going wrong. What our people need to hear, though, is how do we make it right and how can we benefit at a pocketbook level for making it right? If we teach our young people to put up solar panels, they're on their way to becoming electrical engineers, electricians, they can join unions.
Those are green pathways out of poverty. Teach a young person how to weatherize a building so it doesn't leak so much energy. We can bring those greenhouse gases down. That young man is on the way to become a glazier, double-paning glass. These are the jobs of the future. The problem is right now our young people are standing in the back of the line for the last century's pollution-based jobs that are leaving the country anyway.
We could put our young people in the front of the line for the clean and green jobs that are coming. I think that's got to be - it's not just - the environmental movement now is no longer just for the hybrid crowd or the people who care about polar bears, it's about putting the tools and technology and the training in our young peoples' hands to go out there and fix America.
Tavis: As I listen to you talk, Van, I'm trying to juxtapose in my mind two things. On the one hand, you are suggesting that there are so many opportunities, as you put it, to find green pathways out of poverty, green pathways out of the dire straits that so many Black folk and other people of color live in every day.
On the other hand, it is these very same people, these Black and Brown folk who you love so much, who I love so much, who are the primary victims of environmental racism. The flip side of this very same argument. I was about to ask, does that ever occur to you, of course it does; that's the work that you do. But it's an interesting irony.
Jones: It really is. We get hit first and worst with all the negatives of the environmental problem. Our children have the cancer, the asthma epidemic is out of control, we are the ones who are eating the bad food, and we don't get the organic food. People who have the money, they can go Whole Food that looks like Whole Paycheck to us sometimes. (Laughter)
We can't go and afford that for one strawberry. (Laughter) So we are the community that really most needs to say, "Listen, we suffered the most in the pollution-based economy. If you're going to have a green and clean economy, green the ghetto first." That's what Majora Carter in the South Bronx is famous for saying: green the ghetto first.
Bring the solar panels here. Put those solar panels on my grandmama's house. Bring her energy bill down. Bring that organic food into the neighborhood so that we can afford to feed our children well. We don't want eco-apartheid, and that is the big danger as we begin to respond to global warming and these issues. We could wind up in a situation where we get hit first and worst on everything negative, and then benefit last and least on everything positive. Dr. King would have stood against that.
Tavis: See - and I know Majora, I respect her immensely, as you do, I know, and when she says, "Green the ghetto first," she's right about that. Here's what concerns me. When we say, "Green the ghetto first," you're talking primarily to government. Now government is in many ways responsible for the regulation that isn't happening which is allowing this environmental racism to grow and to foster, impacting Black and Brown people every day.
But I'm raising it, Van, because I wonder whether or not we're talking to the right crowd. I have no reason - you disabuse me of this notion, if you can - but I have no reason to believe that government is really trying to hear you, Majora, or anybody else "Green the ghetto first," and if the Republicans, with all due respect to Mr. McCain, are successful at winning the White House, that is the party, the Republican Party, who says all the time, "Less government in our lives." So tell me how you get government to hear what you're saying about green the ghetto first.
Jones: Well, what's great about what you're saying is that it's a recognition that the real engine for any economic transformation will be the business community. The problem we have right now, of course, is that the government which sets the rules for business is on the side of the problem-makers in the U.S. economy. If you're a big polluter, you get tax breaks, subsidies. If you're a little eco-entrepreneur, if you're an African American trying to start a solar company, you get almost zero help.
So what we're saying is we want the government to be on the side of the problem-solvers in the U.S. economy, these new industries that are coming on. Why should we give billions of dollars now to oil companies? They're making record profits. Take those billions and give them over to the rising green businesses who can be Black, Brown, green, purple, or otherwise.
At this point, we have a tremendous opportunity for both green jobs and for green entrepreneurial activities. For instance, if the government says, "We are going to now weatherize millions of buildings so they don't leak so much energy," that's millions of jobs, thousands of contracts. If the government says, "We're going to have a World War II mobilization, crash solar programs, put up solar panels everywhere so we can begin to respond to these energy prices going up, greenhouse gases going up, jobs going down," if the government sets that program up, people will then be able to get those contracts and those jobs.
So there's a relationship now between getting the government from helping the problem-makers, get the government helping the problem-solvers. That will create jobs and opportunity for our community, if we demand it.
Tavis: Let me circle back now to this conversation we had earlier about Dr. King. I mentioned that we're going to be in Memphis next week. You'll be there, obviously, with your Green For All program. Just about every other major Black leader at some point next week will make his way into Memphis, and every leader who thinks he's Black or wants to be, like Bill Clinton, will be in Memphis at some point next week.
Everybody going to Memphis next week to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. King, 40 years later. I wonder to what extent you think that these leaders are missing the boat on this issue - respectfully. And I say missing the boat because what you're talking the boat we don't often hear come out of the mouths of the leaders.
Not to suggest they don't care about these issues, but these issues have to be properly framed. And if you can't get the leaders in these Black and Brown communities to speak this love language to the everyday people, then how do we get the everyday people to take these issues seriously?
Jones: Well I think that you're seeing now is there is a new generation that is beginning to come onto the scene. I was born in 1968; I was in utero when Dr. King was killed. My father was in Memphis when Dr. King was shot. So you have a whole generation now of people who are in our late thirties, in our late twenties, in our teens who don't just think about hybrid cars, we think about hybrid solutions.
And so we're not so much in the old well, this is civil rights over here, this is environment over there, this is women's issues over there. We think how can we help the whole community? And I think what you're going to see is as we become more articulate and we begin to say, "Hey, listen, we believe we can have a green wave in this country that can lift all boats. We want to build a green economy that is strong enough to lift people out of poverty. We can fight poverty and pollution at the same time, you can save the polar bears and Pooky," I think you're going to begin these younger generations becoming bridge players, bringing some of these movements together that we need.
Tavis: Is there really that much money there?
Jones: Yeah. One of the things that I've been trying to get people screaming about, when you see people talking about greenness and green that, green the other, you think hippies, I don't care about them. Think green billions of dollars. There are going to be billions already, they're being invested in clean tech. When the government in 2009, as everybody expects, cuts a deal to start charging for carbon so it's no longer free just to dump carbon in the atmosphere, I think something like $100 billion a year will be generated just from that.
That is going to create a huge shift in the economy. What I want to make sure is that African American folks are not missing the biggest economic transformation and the biggest play in the economy, probably in the past 50 years. With our website, GreenForAll.org, we lay it out very, very specifically, where the jobs are, where the investment opportunities are, how we can get involved as African Americans and other vulnerable people, disadvantaged people, in this next green wave.
Tavis: And the purpose of, again, raising this issue next week is to what, specifically? What do you want to come out of it? I know why I'm going to Memphis. I have a media platform that can focus the spotlight on these issues. Why are you going to Memphis next week?
Jones: I'm going to Memphis next week because African Americans are now hungry for solutions. Energy prices are going up, jobs are going down. Greenhouse gases are going up, wacky weather is going up, hope is going down. We need to seize on any opportunity that we can to begin to reverse those numbers.
A green economy agenda for African Americans, for vulnerable people, is something Dr. King would be calling for. Dr. King linked issues. Dr. King was for civil rights. He was also anti-poverty. He was also anti-war, and for peace. He bridged those issues. Now we have these issues, the environment's supposed to be either here, anti-poverty over here, justice over here.
Dr. King would say no. Ne would link those issues and he would say, "No, this is one agenda to lift America up, to lift up our most vulnerable, and also to make sure that we never have to fight another war for oil or resources ever again."
Tavis: I just got a minute to go here, and I never, ever talk to you, as you know, without asking you this question, because I want people to know. When I introduced you as the co-founder and now still the president of the Ella Baker Center in Oakland, that name just puts a smile on my face because anybody who really studies Dr. King, as we celebrate him 40 years after his death, knows he wouldn't be who he was without Ella Baker. She taught Dr. King so much of what he knew. So tell me in 45 seconds who Ella Baker was and why we ought to know this.
Jones: Ella Baker was the unsung heroine of the civil rights movement. She was a godmother of the Freedom Riders, she was Dr. King's first what we would now call executive director. Everything he knew about organizing, she taught him. And again, we have so many sisters like that whose names will never be known, but when we started our center, they said, "Why don't you call it the Dr. King Center or the Malcolm X Center?" We said, "No, we're going to name it for that sister."
Tavis: Ella Baker.
Jones: Ella Baker.
Tavis: So when you get a chance, Google, type in, look up Ella Baker. Learn something about Ella Baker while we are talking over the next week or so about this man named Dr. King. Van, good to see you.
Jones: Oh, I'm glad to see you.
Tavis: And I will see you in Memphis.
Jones: Looking forward to it, brother.
Tavis: See you then.
Jones: Thank you.
Back to March 27, 2008